Friday, March 04, 2005

The recent furor over the public display of the Ten Commandments would be comical were it not for the earnestness of the proponents of a secular public square. The notion that displaying these historic foundations of our legal and social tradition is an endorsement of an "establishment of religion" or a "prohibition of the free exercise thereof" is ludicrous.

Our Western legal tradtion contains elements from several streams: Judeo-Christian civil and moral codes in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, Greco-Roman classical philosophy and case law, German Salic Laws, English Common Law and even insights fron the Iroquois Confederation. Shall we ban all references to any sources that contain whiffs of deities or spiritualities that posit authority outside of our modern and post-modern humanistic constructs?

The attempts by the ACLU and other agencies to prohibit any references to religion are not rooted in an appreciation of the letter and spirit of our Constitution and First Amendment. The real agenda is more blatant and insidious: it is Marxism imposed through the judicial organs of our republic.

Marx and Engel's 19th century philosophy is an atheistic substitution for Christianity and Judaism, both of which they heartily despised. Here is a partial list of the parallels:

Instead of relgious conversion, there will be the rise of proletarian consciousness and the evolution of a "new man" in the communist mold.

Instead of a millennium or heaven, there will be a classless society.

Instead of compassionate action freely undertaken by the community, there will be government-imposed leveling.

Instead of the "opiate of religion", there will be Party rallies to generate loyalty and solidarity - of course "deviation" from the Party means banishment or worse.

Instead of the threat of divine judgment in the future, misconduct means alienation and elimination today - after all, any deviation is stalling the rise of the "new consciousness."

Frustrated Marxists excuse or ignore the historical record of ruthlessness in the 20th century with the lame refrain, "Marxism hasn't been given a real chance." Even more insidious, modern Marxists claim that the forces of capitalism undermined the great revolutions.

Any honest reading of history exposes the paucity of such claims. I am not writing an apologetic of global capitalism when I assert that Marxiswm is an abject failure that deserves to be on the ash-heap of history. In its mild forms - Scandanavian socialsm - it produces generations dependent upon government and families unwilling to raise children with a moral compass. In its intense forms - China, the former USSR, Cuba and North Korea - Marxism is a cover for a small elite to rule with an iron fist and for tyrants to carry our socioeconomic experiements costing the lives of millions.

The failure of Communism to penetrate the USA - even during the Great Depression - is a tribute to the American spirit which celebrates individual liberty, personal initiative and spiritual diversity.

The ACLU began as a left-wing agency devoted to personal liberty. But the Marxism of its founders and generations of law-school grads from Harvard and Columbia have produced an elitist and incestuous mentality that sees religion as the enemy of freedom rather than (as our Founders understood) the gurantor of personal responsibility that underlies any democracy.

The Supreme Court should dismiss any attempts to rewrite history and impose a Marxist agenda. Hopefully, the sincerely deceived devotees of secularism will read some history and choose not to follow the totalitarian pathways of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and Kim Il Jong II.